{"id":3354,"date":"2009-08-21T07:54:07","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T11:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:37:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:37:13","slug":"historian-reconstructs-everyday-lives-of-medieval-peasants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/08\/historian-reconstructs-everyday-lives-of-medieval-peasants\/","title":{"rendered":"Historian Reconstructs Everyday Lives of Medieval Peasants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Sherri<\/a>
Sherri Olson, associate professor of history, at her office in Wood Hall. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Try to imagine the life of a peasant during medieval times and you will likely envision a penniless farm laborer who, perpetually bound to the soil, enjoys no freedoms and suffers under the control of an unkind lord.<\/p>\n

Yet such commonly held ideas represent an inaccurate, oversimplified picture of the Middle Ages and of the peasants who were <\/strong>the great majority of the population during the period from 300 to 1500 A.D., according to Sherri Olson, associate professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n

Negative depictions of medieval peasantry persist today, Olson says, in the popular understanding of history, in mainstream history textbooks, and even amongst some professional historians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are all of these incredible stereotypes,\u201d she says of medieval Europe, \u201cthat are as divorced from reality as it would be to say that the modern period \u2013 the \u2018enlightened\u2019 21st century \u2013 is an age of perfection and progress, where we\u2019re all equal, where there\u2019s no more hunger, hardship, or warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farming Villages<\/h3>\n

Exploring what daily life was really like for medieval peasants <\/strong>is part of what Olson strives to do through her research, which touches on medieval European rural society, agriculture, farming villages, peasant culture, and lord and peasant relations.<\/p>\n

Through the study of archival documents, some of which have miraculously survived from as far back as the 13th century, Olson attempts to \u201creconstruct peasant mentality, their worldview, and climb into their shoes \u2013 or their wooden clogs \u2013 and walk around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrary to popular belief, for example, medieval peasants were not slaves, she says. Families were provided acreage that they farmed collectively alongside one another in common field villages, on interconnected plots of land owned by lords. Peasants typically paid rent for dwellings in the centers of these villages, cultivated their fields and harvested crops together, had the right to marry, and could pass the land they farmed on to their children, who were recognized as legitimate heirs.<\/p>\n

Nor were peasants universally poverty-stricken. \u201cIf you were a peasant with plenty of acres, a nice bumper crop of sons and daughters to help you work it, and you had good luck and were a good farmer, you lived very well,\u201d Olson says.<\/p>\n

The peasantry also governed themselves, with individual villages across Europe regularly convening their own local courts, which Olson likens to a \u201cmodern-day police court, rolled in with a neighborhood crime watch organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, peasants made and enforced their own laws and settled their private affairs, with fellow villagers as witnesses. Through a kind of \u201cgrassroots democracy,\u201d Olson says, these local courts served as \u201ca way of ensuring a predictable social life, day after day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many local courts kept detailed records \u2013 called court rolls \u2013 that cataloged the court\u2019s activities and key participants, many of whom are identified by name. It is surviving archival documents such as these that offer Olson an invaluable insider\u2019s glimpse into the everyday lives of peasants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey weren\u2019t nameless to the people making the records in the Middle Ages, and they don\u2019t need to be nameless to you and me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Deciphering the Records<\/h3>\n

Olson has pored over hundreds of court rolls and other documents, deciphering the manuscripts\u2019 elaborate medieval Latin script and transcribing an estimated 1,000 pages\u2019 worth of court roll records alone.<\/p>\n

Through her books and many scholarly articles, Olson brings the villagers to life.<\/p>\n

A collection of her essays about specific aspects of village culture, many of which resulted from years spent examining court rolls, is brought together in a recently published book, A Mute Gospel: <\/em>The People and Culture of the Medieval English Common Fields<\/em> (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009).<\/p>\n

Another book, Daily Life in a Medieval Monastery<\/em>, is expected to be published later this year by Greenwood Press in the \u2018Daily Life through History\u2019 series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people are just as complex as you or I, with their own lives, their own idiosyncrasies, their own limitations and failings,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery person who\u2019s come before us who is now dead and gone \u2013 they all made history, just like we make history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her work, Olson says, requires a love of history and chronology, along with creativity, imagination and, ultimately, a respect for diversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to put your own ego aside and try to understand another person, another culture, another time, on its own terms,\u201d she says. As historians, \u201cwe have to try to get to the closest approximation of the truth that we possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stereotypes of peasant life in the Middle Ages are inaccurate and oversimplified, says Sherri Olson. Based on the careful study of centuries-old documents, she paints a different picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-3354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 00:25:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36597,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions\/36597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}